Blog · conversion

Hand-coded vs WordPress vs Shopify vs Webflow: the honest comparison

Updated September 28, 2026 · about 18 min read

We build on every one of these. Here's what each does well, where each fights you, and which one your situation actually calls for — even when it's not the one we'd rather build.

The question behind the question

"Should I build on WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, or have it custom coded?" is really three questions: what does the site have to do, who edits it, and how much does speed matter. Answer those and the platform mostly picks itself. Answer them wrong and you'll be migrating in eighteen months.

We build on all of them. We'd rather be honest about each than sell you the one we like. What follows is that honesty, from building and fixing a lot of sites on every platform on this list, including a 2012 business of our own we moved off a managed WordPress host to hand-coded static files in 2026 and watched the speed scores go from the sixties to the high nineties.

Hand-coded: the blank canvas

A hand-coded site is HTML, CSS and JavaScript written for your business, with nothing else in the way. No theme, no plugins, no page builder, no database to hack.

Why we prefer it: it's a blank canvas. We can code anything into it — calculators, estimators, booking paths, assistants, games, automation that runs the business — without fighting a platform. It loads fast because there's nothing to load but your page; Lighthouse scores in the mid-to-high nineties are normal, not heroic. It's secure because there's nothing to update and nothing to exploit. And it's yours: files on a server, portable anywhere.

Where it costs you: your team can't easily edit it without a developer. That's why we offer it as subscribe-to-own — from $99 a month, we build it, host it, and make the changes; you own it outright at a buyout point between 24 and 36 months. For a business that changes its site a few times a year and needs it to convert every day, that's usually cheaper than any platform plus the plugins plus the person who maintains them.

Honest fit: the site is your main lead source; you rarely edit; speed and conversion matter more than a drag-and-drop editor; or you want a tool or experience a template can't do. Not a fit: a large store, or a team that publishes daily.

WordPress: the editable default

WordPress runs a huge share of the web because anyone can edit it. That's its strength and its curse.

Strengths: your team can edit everything. Blogging and content are first-class. There's a plugin for nearly anything. Hosting is cheap and everywhere — including DIY WordPress hosting from $12.99 a month at the Eye To Ad Media storefront, buyweburl.com, if you want to start there.

Limits: plugins accumulate, and every one is a speed and security risk. Themes are generic by default. Updates break things at 2 a.m. Real speed on a phone takes discipline most WordPress builds never get — we routinely rescue sites with forty plugins and a Lighthouse score in the thirties.

Honest fit: content-heavy sites with an in-house editor. A blog that publishes weekly. A site where the team will genuinely edit pages often. Built lean — a light theme, the minimum plugins, money pages hand-tuned — it can be fast and convert. Built the usual way, it's a slow brochure. Our WordPress designer page says how we build it.

Shopify: the store

If you sell products online, this is almost always the answer, and we'll say so even when a client wanted something else.

Strengths: the best checkout in the business, payments and shipping solved, reliable hosting, an app for everything, a theme system a store owner can drive. Nothing else here comes close for a catalog.

Limits: apps pile up and slow the site; themes are generic by default; the blog and content tools are weak; deep customization means Liquid and a developer; and the site has to be actively kept fast on a phone.

Honest fit: any real store. Not a fit: a service business with no catalog, or a "store" that's actually a configurator or a B2B portal — those fight Shopify constantly and belong on a hand-coded build. Our Shopify designer page covers the conversion side: product pages that answer questions, a checkout with nothing added, apps kept to the minimum.

Webflow: the closest a builder gets to hand-coded

Webflow produces clean, fast pages with real design control, and an editor a marketer can use without a developer. It's the platform we recommend most often to businesses that want design freedom and speed but also want to edit their own pages.

Strengths: fast output, clean code, real design control, solid hosting, a CMS good enough for blogs and case studies.

Limits: ecommerce is limited, complex logic and member areas strain it, costs scale with plans, and you're on Webflow's hosting.

Honest fit: marketing sites, landing pages, portfolios, agencies, SaaS marketing sites. Not a fit: big stores, applications. How we build on Webflow →

Wix and Squarespace: the first site

Plenty of good businesses run on Wix or Squarespace, and there's no shame in it. They get a small business online in a day for very little, and Squarespace in particular makes beautiful sites. We fix the conversion layer on both — the first screen, the phone number's position, the offer, proof placement, the form — inside the platform, without a rebuild.

Limits, honestly: slower pages than hand-coded or Webflow, limited control over technical SEO, generic templates, and custom tools mostly aren't possible. Squarespace templates push a photo-first layout that buries the offer; Wix sites accumulate elements until they crawl.

Honest fit: a first site that has to exist this week, a portfolio, a restaurant, a small service business. Know when to graduate — usually the moment the site becomes the business's main lead source. When you do, we migrate with URLs mapped and redirects set so rankings carry over. Wix → · Squarespace →

The comparison, side by side

Our working view from building and fixing sites on all of them. Platforms change; the trade-offs mostly don't.

What we recommend, by situation

• Local service business, phone is the goal, edits a few times a year: hand-coded, subscribe-to-own. Fastest, converts best, nothing to maintain.
• Same business, but the team wants to edit pages weekly: Webflow, or lean WordPress with the money pages protected.
• Online store: Shopify. Build the conversion layer, keep apps to a minimum, plan the search side with ecommerce SEO.
• Publisher, blog, content site: WordPress, built lean.
• SaaS or agency marketing site: Webflow or hand-coded.
• Something that does something — a tool, booking, configurator, member area: hand-coded. Every template platform will fight you.
• Need it live this week for almost nothing: the $5.99/month DIY builder or DIY WordPress at buyweburl.com, with a plan to graduate.

Whatever the platform, the job is the same: a first screen that says what you do and what to do next, the phone where a thumb reaches it, proof beside the offer, one clear action, and a page that loads in under three seconds. The platform decides how hard that is. It never decides whether it matters.

Speed, tested, on the record

Because "fast" is a claim everyone makes, here is how we measure it. We run every page we build through Google's Lighthouse — the same engine behind PageSpeed Insights, free, public, and the one Google itself uses for Core Web Vitals. Our target on mobile is the mid-nineties or better. Hand-coded pages get there by default; Webflow gets there with care; WordPress and Shopify get there with discipline; Wix and Squarespace get close on a good day.

Run your own site through it right now. If the mobile score is under 70, that's a leak you can measure — and it's almost always images and blocking scripts, which are fixable on any platform.

What a migration actually involves

"Can we move without losing rankings?" is the question that stops most businesses from graduating, so here's what a careful migration looks like.

1. Inventory every URL that gets traffic or has links pointing at it. Search Console and analytics give you the list.
2. Map each one to its new address. Keep the URL identical where possible; where not, plan a redirect.
3. Carry the content over — titles, descriptions, headings, body text, images with their alt text, structured data. A migration is not the time to rewrite everything, because you won't know whether a ranking change came from the move or the rewrite.
4. Set the redirects — permanent (301) from every old URL to its new one — and test them before launch.
5. Launch, then watch. Submit the new sitemap, monitor Search Console for errors, and check rankings weekly for a month. A small wobble is normal; a cliff means a redirect is missing.
6. Then improve. Once rankings settle, fix the conversion leaks the old site had. That's the point of moving.

Done this way, the moves we've made have held or improved rankings, and the speed gains often lift them. Done carelessly — new URLs, no redirects, rewritten content all at once — a migration can undo years of search work in a week. It's also why the search side and the build side should talk: our sister brand Eye To Ad Media handles the rankings, and we coordinate every move with them.

Total cost of ownership, honestly

Platform pricing pages show a monthly number. Total cost is bigger, and it differs by platform in ways worth knowing before you choose.

WordPress: hosting ($13–$60/month for something decent), premium theme, three to eight plugin licenses ($50–$300/year each), and the maintenance — updates, backups, the occasional 2 a.m. break. Budget for someone to maintain it, or budget for the day nobody did.

Shopify: the plan ($39–$399/month), transaction fees if you don't use their payments, and apps — the average store runs six or more at $10–$100/month each. Apps are where Shopify budgets quietly double.

Webflow: the site plan ($14–$39/month for most marketing sites), and that's mostly it. Design changes cost designer time.

Wix and Squarespace: $16–$50/month, few add-ons, and the cost of the ceiling — the day you outgrow it and pay to move.

Hand-coded: the build, then hosting that can be nearly free for a static site, and no licenses. With subscribe-to-own from $99/month, the build, hosting and changes are one number, and you own the site at the buyout. Over three years it's usually the lowest total for a business that rarely edits.

The honest comparison isn't the monthly plan. It's the three-year total including the people, and including the cost of the leaks the platform makes harder to fix.

Security, honestly

Static, hand-coded sites have almost no attack surface: no database, no login, no plugins, nothing to update. That's not a boast; it's arithmetic. Most compromised small-business sites are WordPress sites with a plugin nobody updated.

Platform sites are secure when someone maintains them. Shopify and Webflow handle that for you; WordPress needs a person. If you build on WordPress, the maintenance plan is part of the site, not an option.

On our own builds we add the boring, effective layers: content security policy headers, forms with honeypots and timing checks, no third-party scripts we can't name, and contact addresses assembled in the browser so scrapers don't harvest them. None of it is visible. All of it matters the week something goes wrong.

Questions to ask any web designer, regardless of platform

• "What will the mobile Lighthouse score be, and will you show me?" Anyone who builds for speed will name a number and run the test in front of you.
• "What's in the first screen on a phone?" The right answer names the customer's problem, the phone number and one button.
• "How many plugins or apps, and what's each one for?" A short list with reasons is good. A long list is a slow site.
• "Who owns the site and the domain?" You, in writing. Always.
• "What happens when I want to change something?" An honest answer about editing, turnaround and cost.
• "Have you sold anything?" The person writing the page should have made a stranger say yes in real life.

The company-side answers for Denver businesses are at Denver Web Design; the designer himself is at zacharytyewennstedt.com. And whichever platform you land on, the free conversion audit is the same: a stranger's eye on whether the door is open.

Three real migrations, and what they taught us

Platform advice is cheap; moves are where you learn. Three we've done, described by type.

A 2012 bath-remodeling site, managed WordPress to hand-coded static. Fourteen years of pages and rankings, a plugin stack nobody remembered installing, and mobile speed scores in the sixties. The move: every URL inventoried, content carried over unchanged, redirects for the handful that changed, structured data rebuilt, a phone-photo estimator added as the new offer. Mobile speed went to the high nineties. Rankings held through the move and improved as the speed settled in. Lesson: the content wasn't the problem; the weight was.

A clinic, page builder to hand-coded. A page-builder site that looked polished and converted poorly: the first screen was a photo and a name, the booking path was four taps. The move kept the brand, rewrote the first screen around the patient's question, added a scripted assistant that answers at midnight and books, and cut the booking path to one tap. Lesson: the platform wasn't the leak, but it made the fix impossible without moving.

A roofing company, new build, hand-coded from day one. No migration — a clean start with the first screen written before any design: "photos of the problem first, then a price." City pages built around real search terms, an inspection tab that follows you, structured data for AI answers. Lesson: when you start with the conversion layer, the platform decision is easy, because you already know what the site has to do.

A decision worksheet

Answer these six on paper. The platform will be obvious by the end.

1. What is the site's one job? Calls / sales / content / a tool. (Sales → Shopify. A tool → hand-coded.)
2. Who edits it, how often? Weekly by the team → WordPress or Webflow. A few times a year → hand-coded subscribe-to-own. A developer → anything.
3. What's the speed budget? If ads and search are the main channels, speed is revenue → hand-coded or Webflow, or a disciplined WordPress/Shopify build.
4. What's the three-year budget, all in? Platform, apps, licenses, people, and the leaks the platform makes harder to fix.
5. Will it need something a template can't do? Estimators, configurators, member areas, assistants, games → hand-coded.
6. When will you graduate? Name the trigger now — "when the site becomes our main lead source" — so the move is planned, not panicked.

If you'd like us to work through the six with you, that's the first half of a free strategy session. If you'd rather decide alone, the picker above gives the same answer we'd give — including the times it's not the one we'd rather build.

What doesn't change, whatever you pick

We've spent four thousand words on platforms, so here's the reminder that matters most: the platform never decides whether the site converts. The first screen does. The phone number's position does. Proof beside the offer does. One clear action does. Speed does. Follow-up does.

Every one of those is possible on every platform on this list, at different levels of effort. A hand-coded site with a company-name headline and a hidden phone number is a fast locked door. A Wix site with a problem headline, a tappable number and one button is a slow open one — and the slow open one wins.

So choose the platform for the job, the editor and the speed budget. Then do the conversion work, on whatever you chose, and measure it. That's the whole method. It's the same one we use on our own companies, and it's the reason we'd rather show you the live work than argue about tools.

Hosting, domains and the boring parts that bite

Whatever the platform, a few unglamorous decisions decide whether the site is really yours.

Own the domain. In your own registrar account, in your name, with your card on file. Not the designer's, not the agency's. We've seen businesses lose their name because a freelancer stopped answering email. If you need a domain or a place to keep them, the Eye To Ad Media storefront at buyweburl.com is one honest option; any reputable registrar is fine. Just make it yours.

Own the files. For a hand-coded site, that's literal: a folder you can copy. For WordPress, it's a backup you've actually downloaded. For Shopify, Webflow, Wix and Squarespace, it's an export plus the understanding that the site lives on their servers — which is fine, as long as you know the exit.

Hosting for static sites can be nearly free and extremely fast, because there's nothing to run. That's part of why hand-coded pages score in the nineties. WordPress needs real hosting; cheap shared hosting is where slow WordPress sites are born. Shopify and Webflow include hosting and do it well.

Email is not the website. Keep business email on its own service, so a website move never touches it.

SSL is not optional. Every platform here includes it now; if a designer quotes it as an add-on, ask why.

Backups: automatic, tested once by actually restoring one. A backup you've never restored is a hope.

Analytics and call tracking should survive a migration — set them up on the new site before launch, not after, so you don't lose the baseline you'll need to prove the move worked.

And the exit plan: before you sign anything, ask what leaving looks like. Can you export the content? Do the URLs come with you? Who owns the design? The platforms on this list are all reasonable about this; some designers aren't. Get it in writing.

These aren't platform decisions, but they decide whether the platform decision can ever be revisited. Make them once, correctly, and the rest of this article stays a choice instead of a trap.

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